Cyber attacks against federal websites and networks increased 5 percent between 2010 and 2011, a big slowdown compared to the 40 percent increase between 2009 and 2010, the government reported.
Federal agencies suffered 43,889 cyber attacks in 2011, up from 41,776 the previous year, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT).
Agencies have adopted more performance-based metrics that allow them to better measure their cybersecurity progress and address security weaknesses, according to the report, which details how well agencies are complying with the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act.
Of the attacks reported last year, 11,626, or 26 percent, were classified as malicious code that infected federal networks — that compares with 12,864 such attacks in 2010. Unauthorized access to a network, denial-of-service attacks against users, improper usage, scans, probes and attempted access to networks — 18,373 incidents in all — made up about 42 percent of the 2011 attacks. The rest are under investigation or labeled as "other."
Addressing malicious insider threats remains a significant challenge, the report said, but it did not include metrics on those threats.
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